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alienelvisobsession · 2 years

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The Quentin Tarantino Connection

When he was a teenager in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Quentin Tarantino was by his own admission way into ‘50s rockabilly music. “I was like the second coming of Elvis Presley. I dyed my hair black. I wore it in a big ole pompadour”, he said in an interview. In his recent book Cinema Speculation, he writes about discussing cinema with his mom’s black friend Floyd, who was into blaxploitation. He loved hearing Floyd’s first-hand accounts of being a black Elvis fan back in the 1950s, also rebuking claims that the King of Rock ‘n Roll was racist. He even included “Elvis impersonator” in his early résumé and it must have paid out because he was cast as one in an episode of the sit-com The Golden Girls in 1988. Incidentally, Tarantino was born in Elvis’ home state of Tennessee, where his mother is from, and as a kid was even left there for a year, describing his family as “hillbilly alcoholics”.

Elvis often comes up in his movies. For example in a deleted scene of his now classic film Pulp Fiction (1994), Mia Wallace uses a hand-held video camera to interview Vincent Vega with either/or questions. She explains the game as follows: “There are only two kinds of people in the world, Beatles people and Elvis people”. Mia has no doubts about Vincent’s allegiance. With his swagger, callback to “Grease” and dance moves, John Travolta is an Elvis man through and through.

Of course, Mia and Vincent later go a to ‘50s themed diner called Jack Rabbit Slim’s, where they have the famous twist contest dancing to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell”. The waiters are all dressed like dead stars from the 1950s, such as Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Buddy Holly. Even though, as Vincent would put it, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll must have had the night off, in Mia’s words “an Elvis man should love it”. Tarantino said that the design for the diner, where the guests sit in booths made like ‘50s vintage cars and the dance floor looks like a tachometer, was partially inspired by the nightclub with race car motifs in one of Elvis’ movies, Speedway (1968).

Tarantino references Elvis here and there in his work. In the novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that he wrote, for example, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie) is described by his agent Marvin (Al Pacino) as having spent all his career “running pocket combs through his pompadour”, which by 1969 not even Elvis has anymore.

His biggest Elvis homage came very early on in his career, though. As a matter of fact, to finance what would become his first movie, Reservoir Dogs (1992), Tarantino auctioned a script that he had written, True Romance. It was made into a movie by Tony Scott and it ultimately came out in 1993. True Romance begins with a casual conversation about pop culture in the style of Mr. Brown with his infamous “Like a Virgin” theory in Reservoir Dogs. Clarence (Christian Slater) is at a bar, chatting up a girl. Like Tarantino, Clarence prefers ‘50s Elvis and praises Jailhouse Rock (the movie not the song) where Elvis was everything that rockabilly was about: “Mean, surly, nasty, rude”. And then, obviously interested in picking up the girl, he continues: “Elvis looked good. I mean, I ain’t no fag, but Elvis was prettier than most women, you know. Most women. You know, I always said if I had to fuck a guy – you know, I mean, had to – if my life depended on it, I’d fuck Elvis”. Tarantino establishes the rules for his story right away: just like you have fantasies where you wish you were Elvis or as cool as Elvis, or you wish you could fuck him, this movie is a whole fantasy where you wish you were a hero who had a crazy adventure and passionate love story involving pimps, drugs and guns.

Clarence, an alter ego for the author, falls madly in love with Alabama (Patricia Arquette), a call girl. Clarence loves martial arts movies, comic books, hamburgers and Elvis, just like the film director. He also wears Elvis glasses and drives a purple Cadillac. Throughout the movie, Elvis pops up several times, in magazines, on T-shirts and on furniture or posters. The most striking appearance is obviously when Clarence sees Elvis (Val Kilmer) in the bathroom mirror, dressed in his gold lamé suit but anachronistically sporting his ‘70s big glasses. Elvis tells Clarence that he has to kill Alabama’s pimp, and there the adventure begins.

In Cinema Speculation, which sits halfway between film criticism and memoir, Tarantino goes back to Elvis several times. He writes that Elvis could have been the biggest movie star of the 1960s, if it weren’t for Colonel Parker’s greediness and for the weight of his own enormous success in the music business. He even mentions excitedly that Elvis was considered for the role of Sundance in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) opposite Warren Beatty, before the roles went to Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Tarantino has always took a liking for B movies, so it doesn’t come as a surprise to learn that he’s not dismissive of Elvis movies as a whole and writes about a few of them in detail. He considers Flaming Star (1960), for instance, to be “a truly great fifties Western, and maybe the most brutally violent American western of its era.” According to him, the film director, Don Siegel, who would go on to direct Dirty Harry (1971), was a master when it came to film fistfights and chase sequences. This was because of his background in editing and his penchant for violence. Tarantino also praises Don Siegel’s unexpected use of shocking bouts of violence, of which there are several in Flaming Star. His protagonists, including Elvis’ Pacer, were often at odds with the society they lived in, which reflected the way Siegel felt around film executives and producers. “Pod people” is how he called them, in reference to his movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and in this category he included Elvis’ nefarious manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

Tarantino recognizes that Elvis movies weren’t real movies but “ElvIs movies”, but he’s a fan of Roustabout (1964) nevertheless. He describes it as: “a pretty entertaining little picture chock-full of cool elements, Elvis entering the movie on a motorcycle—dressed head to toe in black leather […], a strong Big Valley era Barbara Stanwyck as his colead, a one-line bit at the beginning by Raquel Welch, the best soundtrack of any of Elvis’ color films, including a rarity for the King on film—Elvis singing a cover of somebody else’s hit, the Coasters’ Little Egypt, and the only film where Elvis gets to demonstrate his Ed Parker-taught karate moves.” Because of course Tarantino loves martial arts movies, just like Elvis did. And blaxploitation, hamburgers, comic books and being over the top. They would have been great friends.

Read here my previous posts on Elvis connections. So far I’ve written about Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol/Bob Dylan, the Clash and Jim Morrison.

#quentin tarantino #elvis presley #elvis #1990s cinema #elvis movies #true romance #pulp fiction #don siegel #flaming star #film criticism #1960s cinema #speedway #roustabout #tarantino #tarantino movies

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ingek73 · 2 years

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Why are women so marginalised by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?

Courtney Love

Barely 8% of its inductees are female. The canon-making doesn’t just reek of sexist gatekeeping, but also purposeful ignorance and hostility

Fri 17 Mar 2023 08.00 GMT

Fourth time lucky? Kate Bush on stage in 1986.

I got into this business to write great songs and have fun. I was a quick learner. I read every music magazine I could get my hands on and at 12, after digesting many issues of Creem, I decided to base my personality on Lester Bangs, the rock critic raconteur; his abiding belief in the transformative power of a great rock song matched mine. (I also obsessed over his running arguments with Lou Reed – they confounded me, but I loved it.) Artists and their songs shaped my life, my beliefs, my self-conception as a musician – Patti Smith’s growling Pissing in the River, Heart’s Barracuda, the Runaways’ Dead End Justice, which I still know every word of. But what no magazine or album could teach me or prepare me for was how exceptional you have to be, as a woman and an artist, to keep your head above water in the music business.

The magnificent Chuck D rapped: “Elvis is a hero to most, but he doesn’t mean shit to me.” I concur. Big Mama Thornton first sang Hound Dog, written for her (and possibly with her) in 1952, which later put the King on the radio. Sister Rosetta Tharpe covered it, too, hers being the fiercest version. Her song Strange Things Happen Every Day was recorded in 1944. It was these songs, and her evangelical guitar playing, that changed music for ever and created what we now call rock’n’roll.

When the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame started in 1983, you would have thought they might want to begin with Sister Rosetta, with those first chords that chimed the songbook we were now all singing from. The initial inductees were Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley; not a woman in sight. Sister Rosetta didn’t get in until the Rock Hall was publicly shamed into adding her in 2018. (She was on a US postal stamp two decades before the Rock Hall embraced her.) Big Mama Thornton, whose recording of Ball’n’Chain also shaped this new form of music? Still not in. Today, just 8.48% of the inductees are women.

Long overlooked … Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Photograph: Chris Ware/Getty Images

The nominations for this year’s class, announced last month, offered the annual reminder of just how extraordinary a woman must be to make it into the ol’ boys club. (Artists become eligible 25 years after releasing their first record.) More women were nominated in one year than at any time in its 40-year history. There were the iconoclasts: Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper, Missy Elliott; two women in era-defining bands: Meg White of the White Stripes and Gillian Gilbert of New Order; and a woman who subverted the boys club: Sheryl Crow.

Yet this year’s list featured several legendary women who have had to cool their jets waiting to be noticed. This was the fourth nomination for Bush, a visionary, the first female artist to hit No 1 in the UK chart with a song she wrote (1979’s Wuthering Heights), at 19. She became eligible in 2004. That year, Prince was inducted – deservedly, in his first year of eligibility – along with Jackson Browne, ZZ Top, Traffic, Bob Seger, the Dells and George Harrison. The Rock Hall’s co-founder and then-chairman Jann Wenner (also the co-founder of Rolling Stone) was inducted himself. But Bush didn’t make it on the ballot until 2018 – and still she is not in.

Never mind that she was the first woman in pop history to have written every track on a million-selling debut. A pioneer of synthesisers and music videos, she was discovered last year by a new generation of fans when Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) featured in the Netflix hit Stranger Things. She is still making albums. And yet there is no guarantee of her being a shoo-in this year. It took the Rock Hall 30-plus years to induct Nina Simone and Carole King. Linda Ronstadt released her debut in 1969 and became the first woman to headline stadiums, yet she was inducted alongside Nirvana in 2014. Most egregiously, Tina Turner was inducted as a solo artist three decades after making the grade alongside her abuser, Ike.

Why are women so marginalised by the Rock Hall? Of the 31 people on the nominating board, just nine are women. According to the music historian Evelyn McDonnell, the Rock Hall voters, among them musicians and industry elites, are 90% male.

The Rock Hall’s canon-making doesn’t just reek of sexist gatekeeping, but also purposeful ignorance and hostility

You can write the Rock Hall off as a “boomer tomb” and argue that it is building a totem to its own irrelevance. Why should we care who is in and who is not? But as scornful as its inductions have been, the Rock Hall is a bulwark against erasure, which every female artist faces whether they long for the honour or want to spit on it. It is still game recognising game, history made and marked.

The Rock Hall is a king-making force in the global music industry. (In the US, it is broadcast on HBO.) Induction affects artists’ ticket prices, their performance guarantees, the quality of their reissue campaigns (if they get reissued at all). These opportunities are life-changing – the difference between touring secondary-market casinos opening for a second-rate comedian, or headlining respected festivals. The Rock Hall has covered itself in a sheen of gravitas and longevity that the Grammys do not have. Particularly for veteran female artists, induction confers a status that directly affects the living they are able to make. It is one of the only ways, and certainly the most visible, for these women to have their legacy and impact honoured with immediate material effect. “These ain’t songs, these is hymns,” to quote Jay-Z.

The bar is demonstrably lower for men to hop over (or slither under). The Rock Hall recognised Pearl Jam about four seconds after they became eligible – and yet Chaka Khan, eligible since 2003, languishes with seven nominations. All is not lost, though – the Rock Hall is doing a special programme for Women’s History Month on her stagewear ...

What makes Khan’s always-a-bridesmaid status especially tragic is that she was, is and always will be a primogenitor. A singular figure, she has been the Queen of Funk since she was barely out of her teens. As Rickie Lee Jones said: “There was Aretha and then there was Chaka. You heard them sing and knew no one has ever done that before.”

Unworthy … Chaka Khan on stage in Toronto in 2018. Photograph: Rich Fury/Getty Images for Netflix

Yet Khan changed music; when she was on stage in her feathered kit, taking Tell Me Something Good to all the places it goes, she opened up a libidinal new world. Sensuality, Blackness: she was so very free. It was godlike. And nothing was ever the same.

But for all her exceptional talent and accomplishments – and if there is one thing women in music must be, it is endlessly exceptional – Khan has not convinced the Rock Hall. Her credits, her Grammys, her longevity, her craft, her tenacity to survive being a young Black woman with a mind of her own in the 70s music business, the bridge to Close the Door – none of it merits canonisation. Or so sayeth the Rock Hall.

The Rock Hall’s canon-making doesn’t just reek of sexist gatekeeping, but also purposeful ignorance and hostility. This year, one voter told Vulture magazine that they barely knew who Bush was – in a year she had a worldwide No 1 single 38 years after she first released it. Meg White’s potential induction as one half of the White Stripes (in their first year of eligibility) has sparked openly contemptuous discourse online; you sense that if voters could get Jack White in without her, they would do it today. And still: she would be only the third female drummer in there, following the Go-Go’s Gina Shock and Mo Tucker of the Velvet Underground. Where is Sheila E – eligible since 2001?

It doesn’t look good for Black artists, either – the Beastie Boys were inducted in 2012 ahead of most of the Black hip-hop artists they learned to rhyme from. A Tribe Called Quest, eligible since 2010 and whose music forged a new frontier for hip-hop, were nominated last year and again this year, a roll of the dice against the white rockers they are forced to compete with on the ballots.

If so few women are being inducted into the Rock Hall, then the nominating committee is broken. If so few Black artists, so few women of colour, are being inducted, then the voting process needs to be overhauled. Music is a lifeforce that is constantly evolving – and they can’t keep up. Shame on HBO for propping up this farce.

If the Rock Hall is not willing to look at the ways it is replicating the violence of structural racism and sexism that artists face in the music industry, if it cannot properly honour what visionary women artists have created, innovated, revolutionised and contributed to popular music – well, then let it go to hell in a handbag.

• Courtney Love is a singer, musician and actor

#courtney love #rock n roll hall of fame #sister rosetta tharpe #kate bush #chaka khan #big mama thornton #cyndi lauper #missy elliott #meg white #gillian gilbert #sheryl crow #nina simone #carole king #tina turner #linda ronstadt

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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Breaking Cat News Retrospective: Year One: On The Air! (Comissioned by Emma Fici)

In Loving Memory of Stewie Magilcutty Mattingly 2006-2023 "A Legend that Will Live Forever"

So a few months ago I had some great fortune: I was getting back into comic strips, one of the great loves of my life and one I haven't indulged in on this blog nearly as much as I should. I never stopped reading them all together mind you, but I wasn't reading them daily and now I have it's through enjoyment. I found newer strips to adore like the nostalgic best friendship of crabgrass, the sibling chaos of Rosebuds and the charming reboot of heart of the city, found long running strips i'm now a huge fan of like Safe Havens, ON the FastTrack, and Kevin and Kell, all by one Bill Holbrook as well as Jumpstart which isn't but is fun, and reconnected with strips I hadn't really read daily like wallace the brave and phoebe and her unicorn. But while all of these are great and many will be talked about on here at some point (I'm saving K and K for 2021) out of all of them it was the one of the last ones I binged.. that ended up being my clear favorite and despite it only having been a few months, has worked it's way into being one of my favorite comic strips of all time.

Now i'd been planning to start covering it next year for it's 10 year anniversary.. but then something terrible happened last sunday that sped up plans: My cat Stewie, with me 17 years, had passed away. See reading the strip i'd related a lot of the antics to stewie, especially since my faviorite of the cast happened to also be an honry 17 year old cat. So I felt one of the best ways to honor my fur buddy.. would be to move this up and thankfully my friend Emma, who i'd gotten into the strip agreed to sponsor it. So with the time finally here those few of you who are either loyal readers of mine or just found this might need an intro

Breaking Cat News is a comic strip by Georgia Dunn, and this all started one day nearly 9 years ago when her cat Lupin knocked over a lamp and broke it. Her other two cats, Elvis, the older cat I mentioned and Puck, the gentler middle child, came to investigate and soon Georgia was improvising reporter voices for them… and it made her and her husband Ryan laugh so much she quickly made it into this comic.

She did what most would do and shared it with friends and what not and it spread around so much she decided to make some more… and they proved so popular she made a website, and the rest was history. THe strip was intially a self published webcomic, done in long form sunday like strips, before being picked up by Andrews McMeel aka Uversal Uclick, one of the two major comics syndicates who replayed the strip on their website , and it got popular to the point they published a collection, published more and eventually picked the strip up for dalies.

The strip has not only been a highlight of my day.. but something I love for it's wonderful fan community, who not only flooded my mentions with their condolences over my death, but have been one of the nicest comments sections iv'e found, as my talking on and on about these characters is not only apricated but encouraged and Georgia herself is a throughly kind person who not only comments occasionally but genuinely engages with and apricates her fans. So as such i've been chomping at the bit to do this longform and i'm happy to finally do so. So join me under the cut for a look at BCN's first year on the air as you meet Lupin, Elvis and gentle Puck as they hit the air.

BCN has a very simple, yet brilliant setup the above strip nicely highlights: three cats living in a big pink house report on the various goings on in said house as professional news reporters.. while still, having the logic and actions of a cat. For instance the endless struggle of a cat getting on the counter, table or what have you and having to scoop them off becomes our heroes trying to figure out why the humans guard the counter so jealously.. and also leads to one of my faviorite lines in the entire strip

Some day I will be able to use that panel, as i've used many of this strips for reaction images. Another reason why I wanted to do this really, to show where those panels are from and hopefully get more eyes on the strip.

Anyways like most comic strips the first yearcan feel a tad off in hindsight. Bloom County lacked focus and took a while to assemble it's early cast, with Opus finally bringing it all together. Snoopy was a very regular dog for several years who just happened to like eating candy instead of the imaginative weirdo we all know. Calvin caught Hobbes in a tiger trap, something never brought up again, as was his time in scouts. For Better Or Worse was more a bunch of domestic punchilnes instead of the generational family dramedy it became and all the better for. Every strip, and most works in general, take a bit to become their best self.

For BCN it's the fact the characters start out far less defined. Over time the cats would gain really fleshed out, dynamic, utterly wonderful personalities but for the first few months, their basically all the same person with their quirks only really hinted at. Again this is fair: Georgia was just playing off the very concept at first and likely didn't have much of an idea at first where to go with this beyond the cats just playing off The Woman and The Man (her and ryan's avatars). IT's not bad at all, but it feels weird to go back to after getting so used to what the strip becomes; a multilayered world with it's own history seperate from it's real world inspirations, a colorful and expansive side cast, and each of our main cat cast and our two human adults feel like well thought out fully formed characters. At this point it's just three interchangable cats, a fourth outside we'll get to, and two humans. It's not bad, but it is worth noting just how weird it feels while also reading the daily strip, which still has plenty of reality based antics but also has as much chaarcter humor as it does cat humor.

As Year One goes on though the cats slowly came into focus. So let's meet them shall we?

First up we have our man on the desk, 50's style reporter Lupin. Lupin was in real life adopted last out of the original trio as a kitten having been found with his various brothers and sisters in an abandoned apartment, carelessly abndoned. Lupin contracted a fever which as his intial fosters found, left him deaf, though nicely his disablity is just a part of him and only comes up once or twice in storyline, while still being compesnated for and given resonable acomindation when needed, as he relies on the teleprompter as seen in one strip where he dosen't realize a cricket's chirping is harming his friends ears for obvious reasons. He's a curious troublemaker, with a love of knocking thigns over, exploration, and teasing eldest cat Elvis

Next up is Puck, a black kitty with only three paws. In real life, puck was rescued from a concerned neighbor who noticed he had an infection and whose owners didn't care if he lived or died. He lost a limb, but eventually gained a forever home with the Dunns. Puck is gentle, sometimes shy, but always kind and upfront.

Elvis is a cranky siamise and older burnt out hardhitting journalist. He is the oldest of the cats and the only one in real life (it's unknown if this carries to the strip) who wasn't a shelter baby, with Georgia instaead adopting him from a farm while she was still single. Elvis is quick to anger, distrustful as heck to strangers, and clingy as heck to the woman. There's a good cat underneath it, and he loves his brothers and mom dearly.

IF your wondering who that strange cat in the rad hawiaan shirt is , we'll get to him later.

Story wise in contrast to the later years having frequent arcs mixed with one offs or one weeks dealing with various cat issues, the first year of strips is mostly just varoius shenanigans though a few running gags are set up that run into present day. Besides Elvis' on and off rivalry with the man and the leaves we have The bi monthly 2am running of the cats…

Our boys love of bacon

Their off hours wrestling league BCW, B C DUB, B C DUB!

Georgia is a wrestling fan herself, and it shows as most of the bcw gimmicks are in some way based on actual wrestlers, with Elvis wearing a singlet similar to Jerry the King Lawler, and Puck wearing an outfit similar to jesse ventura with the cadance of the macho man randy savage.

Story wise there's only three major beats and all are fairly loose, with the final one being the centerpiece of a story arc more like the ones we get later: a full on story followed to the end either over a few months or over about a month. The first is Georgia recapping her own real life pregnancy and eventual birth of her son, known her as the baby, the toddler and later the boy. The cats do their best ot help even fi they dont' quite understand

The actual arival slightly baffles Lupin and Puck but they come to accept their new roomate. Elvis… is a bit of a harder sell

It takes a while but eventually he softens on the boy too… if through shared trauma

It's fairly loose in contract to how later arcs go, but it makes sense as this was closer to the real life events presumibly, versus say the adoption of later cats, which has more of an arc to it.

The second dosen't payoff till the next year when they meet, but we do get the introductions of Sir Figaro Newton (Fig for short) and Tabitha, the cats living above our heroes (In real life it was reversed. )

They have their own running of the cats but we'll get to meet them in full next time.

For now though there's just one major arc and it start with a simple running gag. We're now circling back to that outdoor cat, as you simply must meet Thomas, Thomas, aka Admiral Thomas Whistchester, better known as Tommy! Tommy is based on a friends cat who had his own facebook, shared with his roomate sophie (who we'll also meet next time) before his sad passing, though you can still find it today to see plenty of the delicate artiste herself. He's a fluffy boy who just wants to be friends with our cats who all regard him with suspcion but Elvis in paticuarlly gets extra puffy and extra paranoid about their new pal

I also like his fun hawiaan shirt, which fits his party animal lifestyle well. I love the costuming for the cats, with each's outfit perfectly fitting their personality: Lupin has a full suit jacket which both nicely contrasts his chaotic nature as the strip goes and fits his usual roll as desk anchor, Puck has a simple but stylish white dress shirt and tie and Elvis has a more 70's suspenders and dress shirt combo. It's simple stuff but it shows off who they are and it's a key part of any comic strip, especially, even with the strip having alternate outfits for sleep and such, when they'll likely wear said outfit for the whole run of the strip. He's a nice kind guy. He even has a friend in louie, a skunk who sprays lupin who we've only seen all of twice in two decades despite being the coolest dude on the planet.

This also shows Lupin slowly growing closer to Tommy, a friendship that will presist throughout the strip. For his brothers though, it'd take quite the ordeal.. which starts as many tales do.. with Elvis's overestimation of what he can handle getting out of hand

Three hours later snows coming down, the rest of our heroes are panicked and Elvis himself is lost, cold and hungry.. when he runs into our boy Tommy… at first he's as receptive to his help as someone of his station and dignity would be..

To me this is where the strip grows the beard: in just three strips we've gone from the usual shenanigans.. to Elvis fighting to surivive. Not that the stakes are always high nor do they need to be: the slice of life feel of the strip is one of it's draws. But by raising them realisticly just a touch it forces Elvis to let his guard down and shows tommy as more than just comic relief, but a cat whose lost.. and willing to help others not loose what he had simply because he's that kind. It's the kind of depth that carries comedically and dramatically for the rest of the strip that up to this point had only barely been touched. This is where they cease being maybe one trait that's ignored if needed and ebcome the fully fleshe dout fur babies I know and love.

We then get the full story of how Tommy ended up like this, with Lupin finally truly warming up to him, realizing he's not so diffrent.. and fully being touched by Tommy offering up his bed.. while badly missing his family

The next morning tommy gets our hero home, greatful and with a new friend

But… Elvis realizes he can't leave things and having seen the sign we saw earlier takes a giant risk

The people recognize tommy, and call his woman, who will be both one of The Woman's closest friends and easily the biggest recurring human character outside the big pink house going forward. We get the tearful reunion you'd expect and badly hoped for

Turns out he was only a few blocks away, which is also nice setup as it means he can visit again after this. But for now he gets properly aquanited with our cast

And leaves to go to his happy home.. but with a reminder that wherever he goes.. he's one of them. A great way to end a great arc.

This christmas arc is one of my favorites of the series even now: Emotional, touching and perfectly in line with the season and it nicely sets the tone for everything to come. While things won't be this harrowing, our cats world is about to grow exponentially from here on out. So join me in march as the world gets wider, our heroes make some new friends, deal with some new babies, and things only get better from here. Thanks for reading.

#breaking cat news #georgia dunn #comic strips #cats #lupin #elvis #puck #tommy #the woman #the man #comics #kittys

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leejihoonownsmyheart · 8 months

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UR ALWAYS MY NO.1 LOVER BRIE DW...

TOO MUCH MILK LMFAO..okay but why are one piece stans so....stanny....like there's no way you're still loyal to a show that's stretched on for 1K EPISODES. WHAT THE FUCK

oh...i guess i have to keep thinking of fic ideas... (BRIE DO YOU LIKE THEM. AND DO YOU HAVE ANY SPECIFIC THINGS YOU REALLYREALLYREALLY LIKE TO WRITE)

IN MY DEFENSE...(i have no defense. where's a guy like scoups to put me back in my place when i need it smh) WHAT ARE YOUR RESULTS????

OH WTF I THOUGHT THEY WERE LIKE EXTREMELY SIMILAR... DO YOU USE HINGE?? (and yeah tinder is a hellhole)

OKAYOKAY IM SORRY 😭😭 NO PROJECT DEADLINES!! and i completely understand; deadlines are HELLISH so as long as you finish things on your own schedule, then it's all good <3 (also if you need a proofreader .....)

IM ACTUALLY SO PUMPED FOR THE JIHOON FIC?? IT'S YOUR PASSION PROJECT RIGHT??

PLUTO TV.. BRIE I HAVEN'T HEARD THAT NAME IN YEARS LMFAOOOOOOO.. whats ur fav hunger games (book? movie?) and fav percy book... (if you say anything after the heroes of olympic you're dead to me ......../j)

I DID DROP HIM. HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAH HE PROLLY WON'T FUCK ME AND MAKE IT RELATION FROM SITUATION, SO HE'S JUST A BIG OL BUDDY OL PAL....

sorry i dont have any doritos or abestos...can i offer a pepto bismol

VIKI!! OMG OKAY STOP IM SO EXCITED IM GONNA WATCH IT RN

ditto brie 🥰🥰🥰 YOU BETTER FIND THAT DOMINANT BRAT TAMER MAN HAHAHAHAHAH

don't we all need one tho. they should be governmentally mandated.

LMFAO WHAT KIND OF RIZZ IS THAT BRIE. HE KNOWS HE'S GOING TO MISS YOU SO HE POUTS AT YOU???? WHY WOULD HE DO THAT 😭😭😭

OKAY BUT IF A GUY YOU LIKED POUTED AT YOU....i think the more realistic outcome is that he would be on his knees for you....

I DONT THINK I USED THE WRONG EMOJI, MAYBE I READ THE TAG WRONG???

HOW WAS YOUR DAY/WEEK??? TELL ME ABOUT IT BRIE

-congrats on responding to your asks SMH (from 🫨 anon)

You know when you say it like that a really smart part of me is kinda jealous like i wish all of my hyper-fixations had 1000+ episodes of me to consume like… that’s SO MUCH CONTENT

I DO LOVE YOUR FIC IDEAS I AM SO HAPPY YOU SEND THEM TO ME THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU YOUR MOST RECENT FIC REMINDS ME OF THE INFAMOUS DESTIEL FIC UHM UHM I DONT REMEMBER WHAT ITS CALLED THE ELVIS ONE WHERE THEY’RE GAY AND ITS LIKE THE 60S OR SOMETHING

I don’t think i have anything specific i like to write… Just dumb romcom shit 😃

THIS IS JULY 2023:

MY FAVORITE HUNGER GAMES BOOK IS CATCHING FIRE BECAUSE TBH I LIKE ALL THE STUFF IN THE CAPITOL AND ALL THE SECRET ALLIANCE STUFF GETTING TO KNOW THE TRIBUTES AND THE WORLD VERSUS JUST THE GAMES

AND UHM I DONT KNOW ABOUT PJO THATS SO HARD… i did uh… uhm… possibly… enjoy… trials of apollo… maybe… BUT MAYBE TITANS CURSE IS MY FAVORITE. I LOVE. Nico. LOVE.

WHAT ABOUT YOU WHAT WERE YOURE FAVORITES

Pepto would actually slap, pass it over 😃

I hate him. And men. UGH.

IM SORRY I PUT THIS IN MY DRAFTS AND FORGOT ABOUT IT IM SO STUPID 😃

#b: 🫨 anon

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kult-of-tol-in-gaurhoth · 2 years

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THE FIRST PERSON TO PLAY BLUES ON AN ELECTRIC GUITAR -- THE FIRST GUITAR HERO IN THE HISTORY OF RECORDED MUSIC.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on Aaron Thibeaux "T-Bone" Walker (1910 – 1975) American blues musician, pioneer and innovator of the jump blues, West Coast blues, and electric blues sounds. Artwork by William Stout for his "Legends of the Blues" portraits series.

LEGACY & OVERVIEW: ""How significant was T-Bone Walker to the evolution of the blues?" he repeats the question. “Well,” he says after a long pause. “You look back at everyone who’s ever stood in front of a band playing the guitar and it all traces back to one man. T-Bone Walker was the first person to ever play blues on an electric guitar: How significant is that?”

But Vaughan knows Walker’s contributions go deeper than having access to new technology. Leaving it at that is like lauding a brilliant author for being the first to write a book using a word processor.

“T-Bone created a whole new language for the guitar,” says Vaughan, whose concise leads and impeccable sense of swing and rhythm show that his guitar speaks T-Bone fluently. He reaches for his 1951 Gibson hollow-body electric on the couch in his manager’s office on South Lamar; axe in hands he seems more comfortable talking about Walker, whose work in the 1940s was as major a musical influence as Texas has produced. Vaughan starts playing riffs you’ve heard on records by the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton and Vaughan’s former Fabulous Thunderbirds and the conversation comes alive.

"You’ve heard this one a hundred times before,” he says, playing the driving intro to “The Crawl,” a T-Bird mainstay. “That’s a T-Bone lick. Here’s another,” he says, strumming the harmonic chords that open Walker’s most enduring composition, “Call It Stormy Monday.” Vaughan then hits a note and sustains it with a finger wiggle a la B.B. King, performs a jazz-billy run like the ones Scotty Moore used to play with Elvis Presley, executes the bent-note double stops identified with Chuck Berry, then apes the choppy rhythms of nascent funk guitarist Jimmy Nolen of James Brown’s band. These licks all started with Walker, who was born in Linden and raised in Dallas. The electric guitar has been the defining instrument of the past 50 years and T-Bone Walker was the first guitar hero.

“You know how everyone was blown away when they first heard Jimi Hendrix?” Vaughan asks. “Well, imagine what it must’ve been like to hear T-Bone for the first time, when those riffs were brand new.” Hendrix had contemporaries who were doing amazing things — Clapton, Jeff Beck, Link Wray, Buddy Guy — but T-Bone was on an island. He was the template for so many great guitarists who would follow. In Texas, a Mecca of electric blues guitarists, you had Rockdale’s Pee Wee Crayton, Orange’s Gatemouth Brown, Beaumont’s Johnny Winter. Dallas gave us Freddie King and the Vaughan brothers and Houston could boast Albert Collins, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Johnny Copeland and Billy Gibbons, all carrying T-Bone’s torch."

-- MICHAEL CORCORAN, "T-Bone Walker and the Language of Electric Blues," c. April 2020 (Texas Music History)

Sources: www.michaelcorcoran.net/t-bone-walker-and-the-language-of-electric-blues and www.budsartbooks.com/product/more-legends-of-the-blues-card-set-by-william-stout.

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mamavanheat · 3 years

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Record Collection MasterPost

Below the read more is a list of my current record collection. I’ll update the posts as it grows. Most of my collection was found thrifting so the condition of some covers and records are not in great condition, however I still love them all. 💕 tumblr has been stupid and keeps deleting some of the albums under A but I’m trying to fix it lmao

Steve Allen “Steve Allen Plays Bossanova Jazz”

Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass “Whipped Cream & Other Delights”

Paul Anka “Feelings”

Paul Anka “Gold”

Paul Anka “Young, Alive, and in Love”

Arctic Monkeys “AM”

Chet Atkins “Nashville Gold”

Bad Company “Desolation Angels”

Joan Baez “Blessed Are…”

Joan Baez “From Every Stage”

Joan Baez “Joan Baez in Concert”

Joan Baez “Joan Baez in Concert Part 2”

The Beatles “1”

The Beatles “ ‘65”

The Beatles “1967-1970”

The Beatles “Abbey Road”

blink-182 “Greatest Hits”

Pat Boone “Love Me Tender”

Pat Boone “Star Dust”

The Byrds “Mr Tambourine Man”

The Byrds “Turn! Turn! Turn!”

Carmen Cavallaro “Dancing in the Dark”

The Carpenters “A Song for You”

The Carpenters “Made in America”

Cher “Dark Lady”

Cher “Take Me Home”

Chicago “V”

Claudine “The Look of Love”

Joe Cocker “I Can Stand A Little Rain”

Nat King Cole “Love is a Many Splendored Thing”

Nat King Cole “The Very Thought Of You”

Sam Cooke “Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964”

Cream “Disraeli Gears”

Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young “4 Way Street”

John Denver “Back Home Again”

John Denver “Greatest Hits”

John Denver “I Want to Live”

John Denver “It’s About Time”

John Denver “Rhymes & Reasons”

John Denver “Rocky Mountain High”

Neil Diamond “Stones”

Donovan “Barabajagal”

Donovan “Donovan”

Donovan “Greatest Hits”

The Doobie Brothers “Best of the Doobies”

Jimmy Dorsey “The Fabulous Jimmy Dorsey Plays His Biggest Hits”

Tommy Dorsey “The Best of Tommy Dorsey”

Earth, Wind, & Fire “Electric Universe”

The Graeme Edge Band “Paradise Ballroom”

Elvis “Elvis’ Golden Records”

Elvis “Mahalo from Elvis”

Fire & Rain “Mercury”

Ella Fitzgerald “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Song Book Vol. 1”

Fleetwood Mac “Rumours”

Don Fogelberg “Souvenirs”

Foreigner “4”

Aretha Franklin “Aretha’s Gold”

Bobbie Gentry and Glenn Campbell “Bobbie Gentry and Glenn Campbell”

Leslie Gore “I’ll Cry If I Want To”

The Grass Roots “Leaving It All Behind”

Green Day “Greatest Hits: God’s Favorite Band”

Greta Van Fleet “Anthem of the Peaceful Army”

Greta Van Fleet “The Battle at Garden’s Gate”

Greta Van Fleet “Black Smoke Rising”

Greta Van Fleet “From the Fires”

Sam Harris “Sam Harris”

Sam Harris “Sam I Am”

George Harrison “Living in the Material World”

Justin Hayward & John Lodge “Blue Jays”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Electric Ladyland”

Buddy Holly and The Crickets “20 Golden Greats”

Engelbert Humperdinck “After the Lovin”

Etta James “At Last”

Jefferson Airplane “After Bathing at Baxters”

Jefferson Airplane “Crown of Creation”

Jefferson Airplaine “The Worst of Jefferson Airplane”

Jefferson Starship “Spitfire”

Carole King “Tapestry”

The Kinks “Sleepwalker”

Bonnie Koloc “Hold On To Me”

Don Lanphere Quintet “Into Somewhere”

Julian Lennon “Valotte”

Ramsey Lewis Trio “Hang On Ramsey!”

Gordon Lightfoot “Cold on the Shoulder”

Gordon Lightfoot “Summer Side of Life”

Gordon Lightfoot “The Best of Gordon Lightfoot”

Little Feat “The Last Record Album”

Little Fear “Time Loves A Hero”

Lene Lovich “Stateless”

Steve Lyon “There’s No Place Like Mars”

The Mamas & The Papas “The Mamas & The Papas Deliver”

The Mamas & The Papas “Presenting The Mamas & The Papas”

Barry Manilow “Here Comes The Night”

Melanie “Gather Me”

The Monkees “Headquarters”

The Monkees “The Monkees Deluxe Edition”

The Monkees “More of the Monkees”

The Moody Blues “This is the Moody Blues”

Maria Muldaur “Maria Muldaur”

Mystic Moods Orchestra “English Muffin”

Mystic Moods Orchestra “One Stormy Night”

Graham Nash “Wild Tales”

Juice Newton “Juice”

Peaches & Herb “2 HOT!”

Peaches & Herb “Greatest Hits”

Bonnie Raitt “Green Light”

Smokey Robinson “A Quiet Storm”

The Rolling Stones “Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass”

Linda Ronstadt “Heart Like A Wheel”

Linda Ronstadt “Simple Dreams”

Tim Rose “Through Rose Colored Glasses”

Bud Shank & the folkswingers “Folk ‘N Flute”

Silk “Smooth As Raw Silk”

Simon and Garfunkel “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme”

Simon and Garfunkel “Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits”

Sonny & Cher “All I Ever Need Is You”

Sonny & Cher “In Case You’re In Love”

Rod Stewart “Never A Dull Moment”

Harry Styles “Harry’s House”

The Temptations “Greatest Hits”

The Temptations “House Party”

Tiffany “Hold An Old Friend’s Hand”

Jethro Tull “Songs from the Wood”

Conway Twitty “Conway Twitty’s Greatest Hits”

Bonnie Tyler “It’s A Heartache”

Various Artists “Country Love Vol. 1”

Various Artists “Let Yourself Go! Limited Edition Collector’s Album”

Various Artists “Time To Get It Together”

Various Artists “Vintage Music: Collectors Series Volume One”

The Vogues “Memories”

The White Stripes “The White Stripes Greatest Hits”

The Who “It’s Hard”

The Who “Magic Bus (The Who on Tour)”

John Paul Young “Love Is In The Air”

Film Soundtracks

Guardians of the Galaxy “Deluxe Vinyl Edition”

The Hollywood Knights

Oklahoma!

Saturday Night Fever

The Sound of Music

Stardust (1974)

#kat’s collections

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history105rockandrollblog · 2 years

Video

youtube

Lecture 4: Buddy Holly & The Crickets performing “Peggy Sue” on television on Arthur Murray Dance Party (also known as the Arthur Murray Party) on December 29, 1957. We’ll cover Buddy Holly (1936-1959) in greater depth in our next lecture. But he was one of those enormously influential, generation-defining figures whose impact on young people was immeasurable. Here’s what some of his more famous fans said:

Here’s what some of his more famous fans said:

“He made it OK to wear glasses. I was Buddy Holly.” - John Lennon

“I play Buddy Holly every night before going onstage. It keeps me honest.” - Bruce Springsteen

“You could learn from Buddy Holly how to write songs, the way he put them together. He was a beautiful writer.” - Mick Jagger

“When I was sixteen or seventeen, I went to see Buddy Holly play and I was three feet away from him … and he LOOKED at me. Buddy Holly was a poet - way ahead of his time.” - Bob Dylan

“At least the first 40 songs we (The Beatles) wrote were Buddy Holly-influenced.” - Paul McCartney

“I only needed specs for reading, but as a result of wearing them all the time to try to look like Buddy Holly, I became genuinely nearsighted.” - Elton John

“Of all the music heroes of the time, Buddy Holly was the most accessible, and he was the real thing…. He was one of us.” - Eric Clapton

“By about 1958, it was either Elvis or Buddy Holly. It was split into two camps. The Elvis fans were the heavy leather boys and the Buddy Holly ones all somehow looked like him.” - Keith Richards

#Buddy Holly #Buddy Holly & The Crickets #Peggy Sue #1957 #Arthur Murray Dance Party #television #Rock 'n' Roll

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crystalelemental · 2 years

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With the end of Bravely Default 2, it's time for me to talk opinions about the game.

I'll be going for a while, so I'll break this into segments: story/characters, classes, gameplay.

STORY/CHARACTERS It's been years since I played BD1, but from just what I remember? This is such a massive improvement it's almost comical.

I promise I won't be blasting BD1 for too long, but I feel you need to understand how bad it was to really appreciate this game's improvement. The story of BD1 sucks. It's terrible. There's contrivance born of characters refusing to speak, and then there's whatever this was. Everyone dies. Despite how many are sympathetic or compelling, or caught up in this stuff solely due to unfortunate circumstance, everyone dies, and it's largely your party responsible for the killing. It's completely unsatisfying, and happens entirely because of the big emperor guy, who is Edea's father, wanted to stop this secret evil thing happening for Very Good Reasons, except that his conquest of the planet involves putting the most horrible people in charge of locations and causing untold problems to solve for one (1) problem that is super unclear that he could've just explained to Edea at minimum to get her to understand, but refuses to do so because if he did we wouldn't have a plot. It's an unsatisfying disaster of a game.

Thankfully, while BD2 is far from show-stopping with its story, it's a night and day improvement. Your protagonists feel like actually decent people, instead of black-and-white morality lunatics given the mantle of "chosen hero." Your antagonists maintain complexity, but a good chunk survive, with most that don't being killed either by other antagonists, or the consequences of their own actions. Your heroes actually feel decently developed, with Elvis being The Man, and Gloria having some nice bits, like helping Rimedhal cover up the truth about the Archbishop to avoid panic while they're being invaded. Historical revision isn't great, but she at least came up with a solution that kept the peace as needed, and felt like a response that a serious-minded royal would take. Everyone felt pretty solid. I mean except for Seth. He's kinda just there. I think it's in any Final Fantasy-esque JRPG that the male lead has to be the single most boring person in the cast for teenage male fantasy projection reasons. I don't love it.

To go over each of the areas: Halcyonia is boring, nothing much happens aside from establishment stuff. I did really wind up loving Selene and Dag, thanks to the sidequests that open up as a result of their survival. It's super cute and I love them. I want to like Lonsdale, but he's a Camus archetype. "I am good guy, but oooh, too loyal to not aid in the complete genocide of Musa." Okay buddy. Sure you are.

Savalon is my favorite region. Prince Castor was super interesting, and I love that a much latter quest has Pollux recognizing that Castor had a really good point about the obligations of a ruler, even if his methods were extreme. Anihal is precious, and despite being a piece of shit, even Bernard had some really interesting complexity to him that made the place feel engaging. And doubling back to this region in chapter 4, having the hidden politics still going on, and how the previous events here are leading to the conflicts in the present felt really organic. They're just really strong. You know. Except Orpheus. And what's her name. The Gambler class lady.

Wiswald is...I like Wiswald a lot in spite of myself. I think it has a really weak intro, being mostly a possession plot, where everyone is good just being controlled. And the final twist is that every bad thing has been Folie's fault, and she's doing all this just because she's a psychotic child who gives literal life to art. But I really like Roddy, Lily, and Galahad, and while she's boring as sin, I did kind of appreciate Folie for being a weirdo but in a way that checked out. Like okay, a mostly rejected child seeking attention, finding something she's incredible at but still gaining nothing from others, and turning bitter and actively malicious toward others is neat. Then there's the return phase with Vigintio. The intro to that is great on its own, but the memory from Vigintio is what sold me on the guy. He mastered turning into an undead, meaning that after he's killed by Emma he technically survives, and he actively stabs himself in would-be fatal ways just to prove he's unkillable and therefore won. I just think he's a cool approach to that kind of character, seeing a form of immortality and wanting to be the best mage ever through any means possible. Though also, special mention has to go to Elvis, whose crystal is the most interesting. He's chosen by the Earth crystal, and despite being all over the place and inconsistent, he's selected as the unchanging foundation of the team because, despite his transient nature, his one constant is that he'd do literally anything for the people he cares about. And that's a really cool approach for a character.

Rimedhal I wound up coming around on slightly, but still have as my least favorite. I kinda had that vibe the instant we walked into "This is going to be about religious zealotry!" That never goes well. But it did grow on me. Martha's probably my favorite. I don't know why, I just appreciate the flirting being a fakeout for wanting to brawl, and she's got that very direct, not taking anyone's shit attitude, so she's great. Dominic is slightly interesting, but only in the sense of his frustration at being passed over by the Fire Crystal as a chosen one, and specifically being passed over for the previous Fairy Queen potentially being the reason Fairies are the focus of the witch hunts. Helio's boring as sin, and Gladys I have mixed feelings on. On the one hand, I like the idea of a redemption arc where possible, and fully approve of her getting one in concept. On the other, she doesn't get one, and I'm not upset. Gladys is all about carrying out Helio's orders to have people jump to their deaths, in order to "weed out fairies," who she believes killed her parents. As a result, she's incredibly hostile, and is pretty directly responsible for the presumed hundreds to thousands of people who are dead in a pit. My problem is how she died. One of the townsfolk stabs her, after she saved their life, because she was responsible for the death of his sister when you first arrived. And it's like...okay, yeah, karmic justice in a sense, but by this point, she literally saved your life, dude. And to be honest? Every single person in that town is as guilty as Gladys. Literally all of you. We got to see everyone pressure the jumps, and actively falsify testimony to cast suspicion. Even under slight duress, you all participated gleefully in this ritual murder shit, and it feels distinctly unfair to have only Gladys suffer consequences for that. Either have Holograd burn the town to the ground or let her live, is what I'm saying. Though the bonus quest focused on how some remember her positive traits and others remember her as a brute terrorizing the city is fairly poigniant.

Holograd is boring. "We used to be poor, then we found the mines, now we're militarized." Adam is the most stock standard antagonist, trying to end all war by subjugating everything under his heel, only the strong should rule, etc etc. Edna's also boring as sin. Like okay, she wants to awaken the Night's Nexus, but it's never really clear why, so she kinda sucks.

This leads into the finale. Honestly? I like how it's handled. Your first ending is fighting Edna, destroying her, then having Gloria pray to seal the Night's Nexus again. Naturally, she dies in the process, for reasons. You get a sad ending and the credits roll, and when you boot the game...you see that scene play out from the book's memories. And this is where it gets cool. The book has only shown past events, through many characters' eyes, but now it shows the future somehow. You enter chapter 6 with that mystery.

You seek out the fairies, who explain the Night's Nexus, and turn an otherwise boring eldritch evil into a fairly interesting character. Night's Nexus is the remains of a human woman who entered the kingdom of fairies ages ago, and betrayed their trust by trying to consume the fountain of all knowledge. Her goal was to subsume everything, and coalesce all information to a singular point, to obtain perfect understanding. Past, present, and future are brought together to fully understand the deterministic universe, and that's...actually cool as hell. But she's sealed away forever, because god forbid women do anything, and that's where we get the angry, bitter sense of hate for the world. Sure, her lust for knowledge and control may have resulted in consuming everyone in addition to everything to create a perfect unchanging record, but sometimes you gotta do what it takes. Chapter 6 ends with you attempting to confront the Night's Nexus, but realizing that it is, in fact, completely immortal. You cannot kill it, and the fairies decide to seal off time within their realm, keeping it, and them, trapped in stasis for eternity. Adelle stays behind and it's super sad but oh no another fakeout!

The book shows you the battle of the previous heroes, and an asterisk you missed. You track it down, and you can finally read the book. Turns out, the book has its own asterisk, for the Librarian class, which I would kill to play as, because it sounds like magic. But it also turns out to be the soul jar for the Night's Nexus. If the book is in tact, the body will revive. This is...actually really interesting, and it checks out, because those visions of the future can only come from an entity with that potential foresight, and only the Night's Nexus has gained that level of ability. So it's actually pretty well done. Unfortunately, the climax is fairly sub-standard. You go to a new dungeon, you face off against it, the fight isn't that scary and its true form is less interesting than the mummy thing with shadow hands, and then you get your standard ending. But it's satisfying. Like, if nothing else, the story is satisfying, and I enjoyed experiencing it. The characters have a few duds, but mostly wind up being pretty engaging. I liked it a lot.

CLASSES The classes of this game are unbalanced as hell, but at least everything feels broadly useable. Throughout main game, everything felt viable on normal mode, and many of the classes I didn't use wound up having use as a sub-class, or having utility I didn't pin down instantly. Thief had Godspeed Strike, which is apparently the best midgame damage out there and a boss annihilator. Beastmaster had tricks for every boss, apparently, if you have the right monster. Salvemaker has a great combo with Phantom that, to my understanding, is infinite resources and sure-fire status application. Oracle's Reflect spell can be the best source of magic damage if you cast it on your entire party. There's a lot of stuff.

The only class I could not find any use for was Bastion. Shieldbearer is just an overall better tank class for the team, with Sub-White Mage being an unkillable god for the story. Though even post-game, with AoE stuff suggesting Bastion is an improvement, you often want that single-target coverage, and foes can just Brave past your one-use party shield and kill you anyway. So Bastion felt really weak in my hands, despite being obscene on the enemy team.

If I had to pick an outright winner, it's probably Phantom. The passives are insane. 50% chance to crit when hitting a vulnerability is tremendous, just about anything can make use of that. And guarantees of probability-based skills at the cost of 40MP is unreal. Status is guaranteed, it's the solution to Steal farming with the Thief's skill, and I'm pretty sure it counts Salvemaker's passive to regain used materials as well. And that's just its general utility. Offensively, Phantom/Ranger is unstoppable. You can guarantee hitting a vulnerability with powerful skills, and Ranger's second passive means you regain a BP if you crit, which is most of the time. You can toss out insane damage while maintaining max BP, it's insane. And it's a pure upgrade on Godspeed Strike strats as well. I imagine this is the best application for Hellblade too, since hitting a vulnerability with perfect elemental coverage is a great way to get constant crits. It's just such a powerful class.

My other preferred classes were Spiritmaster, Shieldmaster, Red Mage, Ranger, and Oracle. Shieldmaster was fantastic team defense with infinite healing as a sub-White Mage. Red Mage got Double Cast, which was fantastic after Wiswald. Prior, Black Mage bypassing immunities and absorb effects was better. Ranger is the other half of Phantom, and I just like running bows. Oracle had a lot of problems but I love it in spite of everything. Spiritmaster is the hard one, because its second passive is legitimately insane for supportive effects, allowing constant regen of HP, MP, curing status, negating debuffs, reviving the party, and giving +1BP. Its problem is it also clears buffs, and has horrific anti-synergy with classes like Bard and Oracle, which...kinda leads into my big problem with the classes.

Magic sucks post-game. Prior, it's great, just hit an enemy weakness and you're dealing good damage. But eventually, you reach end- and post-game, and your physical classes just dominate. Red Mage doublecasting into an enemy weakness might deal around 6-10k, depending on how strong the magic is and your crit rate. A single crit off that Phantom/Ranger build would deal 14-17k. It's unreal how much stronger your physical classes get. And this in spite of magic's built-in limitations. No magic class combination affords you perfect elemental coverage. You can get 5 at most with Black Mage and either Red Mage, Oracle, or Pictomancer. The only class with perfect coverage is Hellblade, but frankly? Hellblade's best utility is dying. Use it as the sub-class, with the Red Mage skill HP/MP Conversion to cast magic from HP instead, and use Ultima Blade. It uses all your MP (HP now) to deal damage, and with max HP, you deal 99,999 damage in one swing. That's way stronger than anything magic can do!

The only exception I've seen is Reflect strats. If you get your entire party with Reflect, and cast a party-wide spell that targets all your allies, it will reflect four times. Meaning that a single cast now hits all enemies four times. If you use all your brave points, that's now 16 casts in one round. 32 with Red Mage's doublecast. If the foe even takes neutral damage, you're looking at a ton of damage in one move. But the problems now should be obvious. Multi-target boss battles have varied, non-overlapping weaknesses and resistances, so you're rarely getting that full effect. But moreover, Reflect is removed by Spiritmaster. And every one of the trial fights has "Counter any skill: BP +1," so casting healing magic is a bad idea. Meaning you use healing items instead, and nothing else. Your best healer isn't even a healer, it's a random support with "Healing Item Amp" throwing X-Potions around. You basically give up everything heal-wise for a high-risk strategy to explode the foe in one round, focused on one caster and two Bards to boost magic and crit rate and get them a guaranteed action afterward. Which is a lot worse off than the physical classes being so self-sufficient and dealing better numbers otherwise.

GAMEPLAY With that introduction to classes out of the way, the last factor is just the gameplay itself. I'm going to say overall great with caveats.

The main game is fantastic. It wasn't until Chapter 4 that I started to feel bogged down. Everything prior is great. Dungeons are reasonable length, have some interesting challenges, and boss fights were super engaging with a lot of unique strats. Dragoon is probably the only time I felt like a specific class was necessary (Shieldbearer), but given that this game is direct about "You must always have a tank," it's not too unreasonable to expect it to be there. Vanguard only does so much at that point. Thief and Berserker are other close options, but Beastmaster prevents it from being a one-option affair. Thief has Vanguard beating its ass with Earth damage, but Beastmaster can summon the big enemies just before that fight for the same, and doing four actions with all of them is apparently a one-round clear. Berserker needs Bard to help with buffing defenses to avoid just dropping, but apparently the Fire Spirits that Beastmaster summons can inflict Stop. So that's neat. Basically, it's all great.

The only questionable system in a basic sense is weight. I get the idea. Anyone can equip anything for variety, but some classes are lightweight and can't handle much, while others are tanks that can pack all the heavy equipment. You can get heavier stuff on lightweight allies by using accessories that reduce weight, but often those have limited other effects, so it's a tradeoff. By and large, it's a fine system, but sometimes it feels needlessly limiting. By the end of the game, I have all the really good armor and weapons for Shieldbearer. I couldn't equip all of it because of equip load. I am level 75, and the only solution is to add more levels to equip everything. To me, that feels like a problem, and it's one that's easily solved by having equipment be specific to certain classes. But that does lead to situations where it's like "Why can't Red Mage equip this particular heavy armor, they're supposed to be the all-around caster," so there's tradeoffs.

Starting at the last dungeon of Chapter 4, it starts to suffer from JRPG Syndrome, where it's just gone on far too long. Dungeons are overstaying their welcome, fights are a bit more tedious than you'd like for having to do dozens of them, etc. Nothing is new about it, it's just frustrating. At least chapters 6 and 7 do away with that, by having incredibly short dungeons that just lead straight to a boss. But not before Chapter 5 can give you the Crystal's Resting Place as the ultimate test of your patience.

The other issue I take is the trials. Until now, there Brave/Default system had a particular give and take relationship between your actions and the enemy's. You can do a thing, or you can not do a thing and stockpile actions. If you do a thing, your opponent can respond, or they can gain advantage by not doing a thing. If you don't do a thing, you may gain a bit of turn advantage, or your opponent gets to set up something of theirs that may be detrimental. Maybe you're trying to stockpile turns for your mage to get casting, but oops, Oracle set Reflect, or Bastion set up Vallation. Trying to build up to something now wasted your time. The major problem was that Defaulting was, well, the default action. Unless you knew your foe could punish a Default, there was no harm in it. The solution was punishing taking multiple actions via counter skills. The Ranger is the first good example I can think of, where attacking could result in her unleashing Quickfire Barrage, hitting your entire party multiple times, and potentially causing a party-wipe if you were over-zealous and unlucky. While they're annoying, counterattacks felt like a sensible way to avoid making Default the obvious solution to everything.

The problem with the trials is that counters aren't attacks all the time anymore. Instead, you get "Counter any action: BP +1." Which is bullshit. It completely removes the give and take process, and instead makes it so your opponent is effectively always operating at max BP, because they'll counter everything you do. It absolutely annihilated healers, who just give the opponent BP and trap them in healing loops, leading the aforementioned statement that the best healer is "Healing Item Amp." And if you go on the offensive, now you not only need to worry about counterattacks, but giving them max BP again. It's like they realized the game's system was solved at this point, and a well-crafted team didn't necessarily need to change what it was doing, and said "Absolutely not" and decided the enemies should all cheat to maintain the illusion that this is difficult rather than just frustrating. And it is just frustration, because the same strategy I always used worked, I just didn't have enough levels to survive the constant attacks or to deal the necessary damage to offset their shit. It's just a badly designed cheat skill.

This comes to a head with the Bravebearer trial, which is just blatant in its cheating. Until now, foes use skills based on what's actually available through the class they inhabit. Sure, there are some upgrades, like Thief countering your Default with the BP steal skill, but by and large anything they do you can too. But not this fight. Lonsdale gets to set DOUBLE Rampart, which does nothing but waste your actions against a foe who can already shred your BP values. Of course, they all have the +1 BP counterskill, and the Bravebearer can one-shot literally anyone for damage cap for free whenever he wants, leading to situations where he can one-round your entire party for free. But that's not the peak bullshit. No, the peak bullshit is that, if you KO Bravebearer, and one of the others is still up? For absolutely no reason, through no skill other than "Fuck you I win," he gets back up two turns later with like 40% HP. And he will do this infinitely. So the carefully planned solution to take out the mage, then take down Bravebearer, leaving on the tank to whittle down through his double damage negation cheat skills, doesn't work, for literally no reason. This is the kind of boss fight design that I feel should be punishable by death.

This leads to the other big issue: I feel like status is kinda just something to bother the player. Very rarely did status ever seem to work, and most enemies seemed immune to anything that mattered. Every mage is immune to Silence, no one was ever hit by Stop or Slow, I think I got Blind on a foe exactly one time ever. The worst part is, it's not supposed to be this way. The story battle against Bravebearer, which is an incredibly tough fight, is weak to Paralysis. You can lock him down infinitely with Paralysis...if you knew it was going to work. Which, based on past experience, you wouldn't. That's really the issue. Prior experience dictates what's going to be viewed as worth trying, and status consistently doesn't work, until the one random fight where it's a solution you're just supposed to pick up on. I think the better solution is just making status a more viable approach throughout. "But we made like five different status effects that just completely shut the opponent down, we can't let you do that to everything." Then maybe your status effects were poorly balanced. But it's Final Fantasy style, so we knew that already.

FINAL THOUGHTS I really enjoyed the game. I wasn't sure I would, but I took a chance, and I'm happy with it. I will admit to intense frustration around the Bravebearer trial, but even that can be seen as me making my own life harder for no reason, as I still had 24 level ups to go before this became unsalvageable. Though given the structure of the fight, I'm certain it would've been anyway.

Basically, it's solid, but I think it suffers from the same curse that many JRPGs I've played have if I seriously considered them: fantastic, well-designed experience through the main story, that absolute falls to shit the instant you step into post-game challenge content.

#bravely default 2

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rockandrollhistory105 · 3 years